Introduction

Since the seminal
study of Melville Herskovitz in 1941 on how Africans retained their
cultural heritage and developed a sense of community in the
Americas, scholars have employed case studies to contribute to
Herskovitz’s thesis and findings.[1] These
scholars have tended to explore the extent and manifestations of
African survivals in the Americas. For example, William Bascom has
examined how Yoruba speaking slaves expressed their religious
beliefs and practices in the Spanish Caribbean. Meanwhile Franklin
Knight and Margaret Crahan and others have focused on not only how
rural slaves retained their identity, but also how certain
socioeconomic and cultural factors fostered the transmission of
specific elements of the Africans’ culture to members of the
host and dominate society in the Americas. In Latin America, Roger
Bastide has explored how Africans on the plantations of Brazil kept
much of their cultural identity at the height of the African slave
trade and the institution of slavery. Mary Karasch has also
examined the same process among urban slaves and freed blacks in
Rio de Janiero.[2]
Studies focusing on the African diaspora in the United States have
been led by Charles Joyner, Albert Raboteau, and Sterling Stuckey
just to name a few. All three have explored how Africans during the
colonial and Antebellum periods sought to recreate a feeling of
community and retain their identity in the low land areas of rural
South Carolina, as well as in some important southern and northern
cities that held considerable African American populations. In
doing so, these scholars have primarily discovered that the
institution of slavery did not destroy the desire among members of
the African diaspora in the Americas to attempt to employ elements
of their culture in order to survive as either slaves of freed
people.[3]

Earlier studies
emphasized how African culture and identity continued relatively
static over time. This lack of change was determined by duration of
the slave trade that a specific American region experienced. If the
length of time of the trade was short-term then the introduction of
large numbers of Africans who shared the same ethnicity, language
or place of origin could occur to that region. If a region
experienced just the opposite, then it often received a more
diverse African population. In addition, the subsequent termination
of the slave trade of an American region prevented either the
renewal or synthesis of African identity and culture. The
participants involved in this process stopped arriving directly
from Africa. Other studies have also pointed out how rural slavery
created certain barriers in the Americas that Africans simply could
not overcome. Some of these obstacles included the type of labor
performed by the slaves, the commodity in which they produced, and
slave-owner relations. In other words, the plantation complexes in
some areas of the Americas were so insular in nature, and isolated
from the outside world that these socioeconomic organizations did
not offer Africans the time and the space to modify their culture
and identity over the institution’s longevity. What they
brought with them from Africa was what they kept. But such was not
the case in the urban centers of the Americas.

Examining the
experiences of the African Diaspora in the urban centers of
colonial Cuba during the nineteenth century can help us understand
how and to what extent Africans and their Cuban-born children,
freed and enslaved, were successful in reinventing a sense of
cooperation and affinity based on a shared identity. This study can
also help us gain insight into some of the social, political, and
economic variables that existed in Cuba that allowed Africans and
Afro-Cubans to revise their Africanness. It is note worthy that
some of these elements existed in other urban centers of the
Americas. Wherever they existed, they enabled Africans to
successfully modify their concepts of community and identity. In
addition, the success of Africans in this endeavor altered the
culture and identity of the dominant members of American societies.
Central to understanding this process is to underline the notion
that Africans came to the Americas as immigrants. Although
violently forced to emigrate to America to work as laborers, once
Africans arrived in the urban milieu, they responded to their new
context in ways that were similar to most immigrants. In the urban
areas, they grouped themselves according to ethnicity, language, or
place of origins in order to establish benevolent societies.
Besides offering members mutual aid during times of illness, or a
funeral and burial at the time of death, these societies helped
Africans negotiate with the civil authorities for the time and
space to not only recreate their communities, but forge an identity
that was neither African nor American in nature.

The slave trade and Cuba’s
changing demographic patterns

One factor that encouraged
Africans, and Afro-Cubans in Cuba, and Africans elsewhere in the
Americas to recreate their communities and identities was the
constant influx of slaves from Africa. As the plantation economy of
Cuba expanded between 1790 and 1860, and which was sparked by the
increases in the production of sugar, tobacco, and coffee, the
demand for bozal slaves from Africa dramatically took off. For
example, according to Alexander Von Humboldt some 256,000 slaves
had arrived in Cuba by 1825.[4]
Census data for 1827 reported that the overall population of color
on the island had swelled to 393,103. Of this figure 286,912 were
slaves. This demographic characteristic signaled the beginning of a
long process whereby Cuba’s population was gradually becoming
more African in nature. Between 1835 and 1840 Cuba received another
165,000 Africans. By the time the sugar industry had become
industrialized in the 1860s, Cuban slave owners had imported
387,261 African slaves.[5] Many
Africans found themselves in the urban centers of Cuba such as
Havana, Matanzas, and Santiago de Cuba.

The importation of
Africans also changed the demographic landscape of Brazil, and
South Carolina, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well
as Louisiana. In order to cultivate rice, planters in the British
colony of South Carolina introduced an average of 600 slaves
annually to work their plantation between 1720 and 1726. As
production increased so to did the importation of slaves. Between
1731 and 1738, planters secured an average of 2000 slaves each
year. As a result, Africans in South Carolina numbered nearly
40,000 by 1740.[6] Sugar
cultivation caused the demographic change in Brazil. Between 1550
and 1600, the slave population grew from 14,000 to 57,000.[7] Much
of their labor was responsible for producing between eight and nine
metric tons of sugar. In Louisiana, the white population had
dramatically increased by 1746. Nevertheless, the French
settlements throughout the colony were considered overwhelmingly
African, including the port city of New Orleans. After Louisiana
became a part of Spanish America in 1763, the importation of
Africans continued unabated. As a result, the slave population
increased from 5,600 in 1766 to over 20, 000 by the end of the
eighteenth century.[8]

While the slave trade
dramatically increased the African population, coartacion, or the
right of the slaves to purchase their freedom, increased the freed
Afro-Cuban population.[9] In
1827 there were 106,191 freed blacks in Cuba. Fourteen years later
that figure grew to 152,836. By 1850, Africans and Afro-Cubans had
become numerically superior to whites. At this time there were
479,490 whites compared to 494,252 slaves and freed men and women
on the island.[10]
Although the population of color would gradually lose its
superiority by the end of the decade, one can conclude that the
Africanization of Cuba’s population, which had begun at the
beginning of the century, undoubtedly affected the cultural
development and identity of Cubans. Although the right of purchase
one’s self was never gained popularity among the plantocracy
in the southern colonies and states of the U.S. it became a central
characteristic of the slave society in Brazil, and other parts of
Latin America. For example, in 1798 Brazil had a freed black
population of 406,000 out of a total population of
3,250,000.[11]
During the same period, Spanish Louisiana’s freed black
population grew from one hundred and sixty-five in 1770 to 1500 by
1795.[12] This
does not mean that U.S. never had a noticeable freed black
population; it did. Coartacion, however, was not the only factor
responsible for creating it. Instead, slaves received their freedom
from their masters for several reasons. They were manumitted for
providing their masters with loyal work over the years. Others
liberated their slaves upon their death, and stipulated their
desire to free their slaves in their wills. While other slaves paid
for their freedom with money they had saved from being rented out
by they masters to other slave owners. This business transaction
often occurred more frequently in the urban areas than in the
countryside. Wherever Africans found themselves in the major towns
and cities of the Americas, their chances of reinventing a sense of
community and culture increased. This argument makes sense if one
looks at the ethnicity of the majority of bozal slaves who arrived
in Cuba, and in other urban localities of the Americas.

Rafael Lopez Valdes has
discovered that between 1600 and 1800, 187,000 Africans brought to
Cuba came from the Niger-Cross-Calabar Rivers nexus. This water
system is located between the present states of Nigeria, and
Cameroon. During the first half of the nineteenth century slave
traders moved westward along the African coast in order to secure
220,000 Yoruba speakers and members of their subgroups. In
addition, a substantial number of slaves also came from
west-central Africa, particularly from the Portuguese colony of
Angola, the former kingdom of Kongo, and slave entrepôts such
as Benguela, Kwango, and Loango.[13]

Charles Joyner discovered
a similar process operating in colonial South Carolina. In the
slave markets of Charleston, “the most sought-after slaves
were from Senegal-Gambia, and the Gold Coast, but a preponderance
of Africans from the Congo-Angola region also entered the colony
during the formative period of the 1730s.”[14]
Similar patterns may be discerned in Brazil. The largest number of
Africans imported into Brazil came from Angola, the Congo, and
Guinea. In fact Africans arrived in Brazil in three distinct waves.
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the first group
included the Yoruba, Dahomans and Ashanti. The second group to
arrive did so in the seventeen century, and consisted of the
nations Hausas, Tapas, Mandingos, and Fulahs. The final group to
arrive came predominately from Angola, the Congo and Mozambique.
They were sent to Brazil during the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.[15]
Other slave societies in colonial Latin America experienced a
similar process during the slave trade. Although the majority of
African slaves were brought to the Americas to cultivate cash crops
for the international economy, many also found themselves in the
towns and cities. There they provided members of the host society
with important services and commodities. In addition, their
constant arrival influenced the cultural fabric of those urban
areas of the Americas. Their presence would strengthen urban
African communities and help forge an identity particularly in
places they composed the majority of the population. This
demographic and cultural dynamic began in Africa. According to
Jorge Castellanos and Isabel Castellanos, Africans in west, west
central as well as south central Africa, interacted with each other
within their regional localities before being recruited as slaves.
Their relationship with people of different ethnic groups resulted
in cultural sharing, synthesis, and adaptation. Once they arrived
to Cuba, and the Americas in general, Africans would continue this
process within the benevolent societies that many of them
established.[16]

African material before arriving in
Cuba

Some aspects of
Cuba’s culture and identity were formed among Africans before
their arrival as slaves. In West Africa, particularly in the
southwestern part of Cameroon, the Efik, Ekoi, and their subgroups,
particularly males of distinction and honor, had established secret
societies to not only govern their respective societies but also to
pay homage to their masculine spiritual patron god, the leopard,
who symbolized perfection, elegance, and strength. Even the Ibibios
and Ibos of southwestern Nigeria, and the western neighbors of the
Ekoi, had founded secret organizations dedicated to the leopard.
They did so because they believed that humans equitably shared
their physical environment with animals. They also honored certain
animals because as living objects, these creatures could serve as
temporary resting places for the spirits of the dead. This idea
resurfaced in Cuba with the Ekoi and Efik who became known as the
Abakua, according to the Spanish colonials authorities.[17]

The secret societies
Africans created in Africa in order to practice specific cultural
traditions were transferred to Cuba and elsewhere. In Cuba, Yoruba
males established the Ogboni. As a religious and political
institution it had served the king of the Oyo Empire as an advisory
council. I t also provided its members with honor and privileges.
The Ogboni met to discuss current events. It meted out justice to
enforce the laws of Yorubaland. Ogboni priests guarded the secret
beliefs and rituals that they employed to venerate, propitiate, and
“control the sanctions of the earth as a spirit.” The
belief that the earth and their deceased ancestors were the
“sources of moral law,” became the basis of its
religious and political characteristics.[18] In
the nineteenth century, the Ogboni reemerged in Cuba within the
Lucumi community, or Yoruba speakers of Havana. In fact, Yoruba
speakers living elsewhere throughout the island also felt its
authority, according to José L. Franco.[19]
There are other examples in the Americas where Africans employed
political and religious models that they had been familiar with in
Africa. They often did so within their maroon societies in Spanish
America or their palenques in Brazil.

The cultural material
Africans brought to Cuba in order to recreate a sense community
based on a shared identity or “Africanness,” was also
nurtured and modified by their experiences with Europeans in the
Old World. For example, arriving in Spain as early as the beginning
of the fifteenth century, there, Africans were able to gain a
degree of religious autonomy and space in such urban areas as
Seville, Malaga and Cadiz. At this time, Africans as well as
Spaniards were required to group themselves into associations
called cofradías.[20]
These racially segregated confraternities were affiliated with a
specific Catholic church. Africans found these associations
advantageous for several reasons. As mentioned above, they were
already familiar with these sociopolitical and religious structures
in Africa. But as immigrants in Spain, these organizations could
also assist them to manage their collective sense of alienation
caused by their forced move from Africa. More importantly, Africans
in Spain may have employed the cofradías because such
institutions were ideal “bases for the organization and
reorganization of social groups to meet the demands of a changing
world.” In addition, cofradías became attractive to
Africans because they were established on the tenets of
“voluntary participation and the commonality of interests of
their members” particularly “their interests in
survival in the midst of complexities and the strangeness of the
urban area.”[21]
This type of confraternity became important among Africans in
Portugal and later Brazil during the colonial era. Roger Bastide,
Mary Karasch, Patricia Mulvey, and A. J. R. Russell-Wood have all
traced the origins of these institutions. They have also examined
the roles these organizations played in the daily lives of their
members. In Brazil they were always attached to a parish church.
They also served a racially segregated constituency. Their research
has resulted in a consensus among them regarding the
cofradías in Brazil. They concur that “the colored
brotherhoods of Brazil provided a cushion against a competitive,
white-dominated society, not only for the black brought from Africa
as a slave, but also for blacks and mulattos born in Brazil be they
slaves or freedmen.”[22]

Archival data in Cuba
suggests that cofradías appeared as early as the last
quarter century of the sixteenth century in urban Cuba. But by the
start of the nineteenth century, another type of confraternity or
benevolent society called cabildos, had become the popular of the
two institutions.[23] Why
were Africans more attractive to the latter organization than the
former? Cabildos were not affiliated with or located inside a
specific Catholic Church. Instead, its members were allowed to use
their leaders’ own homes as their headquarters or meeting
places. This spatial distance from church representatives permitted
cabildos to enjoy much religious and socioeconomic autonomy than
the cofradías. The cabildos enabled Africans to resist the
attempts of the colonial government and the Catholic Church to make
Africans jettison their identity, and adopt the elements of
European culture. By 1820, members of the gradually expanding
Afro-Cuban population, both slave and freed established numerous
cabildos based on shared languages, nationalities, or ethnicities.
Nevertheless, in other parts of colonial Latin America, including
Brazil, the cofradías remained the central socio-religious,
economic, and political institutions for Africans.

The Cuban context

During the first half of
the nineteenth century, numerous African ethnic groups established
their own respective cabildos. The cabildos of the Congas, for
instance, represented persons from an extensive area of
west-central Africa. They came to Cuba from a territory that
comprised the southern part of Camaroon, Gabon, Congo, and Zaire.
These Africans had a significant influence on the Afro-Cuban
community since a large proportion of all cabildos contained these
African immigrants.[24]

There were other cabildos
representing the language group of the Ibo. The Spanish referred to
them as the Carabali. They originally were recruited from around
theregion and the estuaries of the Niger-Cross- and Calabar
Rivers.[25]

Other cabildos were
composed of immigrants from adjacent regions of Africa. For
example, the Minas came from the Bight of Benin, and included the
Ashanti, Fanti, Musona, and Ewe, just to name a few. The Lucumi
cabildos were predominately Yoruba in composition. The Mandinga had
members from the Fula, and Mandinga. They inhabited the Fulbe and
Malinke areas of West Africa. This region included the territory of
the Senegambia around the Pongo River, north of present-day
Guinea-Bissau. It was within these organizations that Africans
crafted the cultural elements that shaped their communities and
identities.[26]

The establishment of
benevolent societies based on some type of criteria by Africans,
both slave and freed, occurred everywhere throughout the Americas.
In Charleston, South Carolina, African Americans grouped themselves
according to phenotype. Light-skinned African Americans founded the
Brown Fellowship, while “dark-men of the city” of
Charleston organized the Humane Brotherhood.[27] In
Caracas, Venezuela, Africans from the Congo grouped themselves into
cofradías. The examples are endless.[28]

Religious beliefs

The African cabildos gave
Cuba its popular religious beliefs and practices. Their autonomy
and space in urban Cuba encouraged the hybridization of beliefs,
and rituals from West, West-Central, and South-Central Africa with
Catholicism. Palo monte and Santería emerged from this
process. Although these two religious systems are distinct
cosmologies, their appearances were based on a body of shared
beliefs that contained several doctrines. All Africans believed in
the existence of one supreme deity who created the universe and all
living objects in it. Secondly, they believed in a hierarchy of
less-powerful gods who had the ability to influence or alter the
natural environment and the ecological forces of the planet. These
gods, situated below the supreme god, were either the children of
the supreme god, or powerful ancestors, including the kings and
queens of that group or nation. Africans venerated these ancestors
hoping that they could assist the devotee with a difficult task or
problem. In order to ensure that their ancestors remained helpful,
and active members of their society, Africans provided all deceased
members with a proper funeral and burial.

Along with ancestor
worship, African believed that they could use certain flora and
fauna to influence the world in which they lived. They employed
plants and animals in their rituals knowing that they could
increase their power as they encountered an expansive and dynamic
environment.[29]
African diasporic scholars agree that these were the central
religious tenets that most Africans shared before and after they
left as slaves for the Americas. Again, in Cuba these beliefs
became the basis for Palo monte and Santería. Meanwhile,
practictioners of Vodun in Haiti, and Macamba or Candomble in
Brazil, also accepted these universal tenets.

People from the Congo
practiced Palo monte. But some anthropologists have discovered that
some Yoruba elements have been incorporated into this religion.
Devotees of Palo monte venerated a host of spirits and ancestors
who occupied Cuba’s mountains. They believe that the
“mountain was the engineer of life.” Besides this
characteristic, members of Palo monte know that certain palo, or
roots and herbs, can be used to defend themselves from the sorcery
of an enemy. Another element of this religion is spirit possession.
This often occurred during the post-initiation celebrations when an
adherent honored and gave thanks to the deities and ancestors who
had attended the initiation. This last element of Palo monte
resembles a crucial one found among Yoruba speakers who developed
Santería.[30]

For Yoruba speakers,
Santería synthesizes African and Iberian Catholic religious
beliefs and rituals. Yet Congo elements are found in
Santería. Its members believe in the existence of evil
spirits and demons, the veneration of numerous saints; and they
view the spirit world as fully involved with the day-to-day life of
mankind. Santería means the worship of a group of saints or
orishas. This characteristic highlights an important connection
with Palo monte.[31]

The fundamental
characteristics of both religious systems were the outcome of the
process of synthesis and appropriation begun by Africans in Africa.
As more and more Yoruba speakers came to Cuba, and made contact
with non-Yoruba people within the urban milieu their religion
continued to evolve. Syncretism occurred on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean because Africans generally believe that religious
systems different from their own were structures that could enrich
rather displace their own metaphysical framework. Some Afro-Cubans
saw Catholicism in this fashion owning in part to how that religion
was practice on the island. Catholicism offered Africans the
opportunity to venerate saints with the use of rites, images,
devotions, relics, indulgences, and other external attributes. The
saints answered the prayers and offerings from their followers who
sought their assistance and guidance. This convergence of
Catholicism with Yoruba beliefs prompted some blacks to accept it.
White Cubans, for similar reasons became interested in
Santería.

Transmission of African culture and
identity to white Cubans

White Cubans were not only
attracted to Santería, but also a religion and lifestyle
brought to Cuba by the Apapa from Calabar. One of the first
Apapa-based benevolent societies, called the cabildo Abakua, was
established in 1836 in the town of Regla across the bay from
Havana. The Apapa of the Abakua believed that a palm tree embodied
their supreme god, Abasi. Their baptismal ritual also made the
devotee invincible from the evils of the physical world and from
death.[32]

In 1857, the first white
Cuban Abakua society was created. It spawned not only other white
Abakua societies, but interracial ones as well. Whites who joined
were members of Cuba’s privileged classes, including soldiers
and government officials. The Abakua became popular among both
blacks and whites because after their initiation they did not have
to disavow their own orishas and Catholic saints.[33] The
existence of white Abakua societies is suggestive of the degree of
cultural synthesis that occurred in Cuba during the nineteenth
century. Adherents of Palo monte, Santería, Catholicism, and
Abakua exchanged deities, ancestors, saints, beliefs, and rituals.
They incorporated those that proved attractive and successful into
their own beliefs structures. This transformative feature of all of
Cuba’s popular religions assisted in allowing not only
Africans and their descendants from sustaining their communities
and identities, but white Cubans too.

Why did this occur in
Cuba? Politically, the colonial officials realized that in order to
prevent slaves and freed blacks from rebelling or conspiring to
overthrow the system, they needed to offer Afro-Cubans space and
autonomy to maintain their culture, and identity. For example, both
the Bandos de gobernaciones y policía of 1792 and
1842 afforded Africans and Afro-Cubans the right to practice and
enjoy certain elements of their culture. Both laws sanctioned the
right of blacks to establish their cabildos. Afro-Cubans meet in
order to participate in several activities. The laws of 1792 and
1842 allowed Africans “from Guinea” to provided the
deceased members of their cabildo with a proper funeral and burial.
Secondly, Afro-Cubans gathered inside of their cabildos to dance
and play their music according to their traditions. Called
“tumbas” these parties occurred on holidays often
marked on the Judeo-Christian calendar. Afro-Cubans could practice
their religious beliefs as long as they did not fuse them with
Catholicism. Finally, the laws of 1792 and 1842 gave the cabildos
the right to elect their own officers, often entitled kings and
queens, so they could represent their groups’ interests in
front of the colonial authorities.[34] It
is unsurprising that Africans, slave and freed, retained,
synthesized and expressed some of the culture materials they
brought with them from Africa. It is also interesting to note that
the cultural space enjoyed by Africans led to the emergence of
political movements based on a “consciousness of kind.”
These cabildo-led movements sought to abolish slavery and end
Spanish authority on the island on several occasions during the
first half of the nineteenth century.

The inter-cultural
hybridization that occurred among blacks and whites in Cuba was
also “part of a wider New World or American complex.”
Edward Brathwaite has called this complex
“creolization,” while Timothy Breen uses the tern
“cultural conversations.” Both terms refer to the
“continuing series of reciprocal relations between human
individuals and groups, involving barrowing and resistance,
conflict and cooperation, modification and
invention.”[35] Both
writers claim that these processes often occurred in rural areas on
American plantations. The result of these relationships was the
“forging [of a] distinctly different but nonetheless
interdependent New World cultures.” It is my contention that
black-white Cuban cultural barrowing, synthesis, and invention took
place predominately in the urban context, and had long-term effects
on Cuba’s culture and identity during the last half of the
nineteenth century. Politically, it would encourage some whites to
assist Afro-Cubans in their endeavors to abolish slavery and
destroy Spanish colonialism in the early 1880s. After the Ten
Year’s War, 1868-1878, colonial officials on the island began
to view the process of creolization, or the cultural conversations
that were taking place between Afro-Cubans and whites as being
completely dominated and informed by Africans and Afro-Cubans
alone. Be that as it may, officials in Cuba sought to suppress the
cabildos by the end of the century on the grounds that they had
become a threat to the island’s security, modernization, and
relationship with Spain. They were unsuccessful, and the cabildos
remained venues where both blacks and whites continued to barrow,
modify, and invent after Cuba gained its independence from Spain in
1902.

Conclusions

This paper has sought to
demonstrate how Africans employed their benevolent organizations to
develop African communities and identities in nineteenth century
Cuba. In addition, certain variables existed in the urban centers
of the island that created a dynamic and conducive environment that
provided Africans and Afro-Cubans with the opportunity to lay the
foundation for the island’s syncretic culture and identity.
Cultural antecedents in Africa and Spain, along with the slave
trade, brought Africans to Cuba who already were involved in
modifying their own cultural materials that would inform their
communities and identities in Cuba. Cuba’s demographic
pattern, the nature of Catholicism, and colonial law together
enabled Africans to engage themselves in the cultural conversations
with other Africans as well as whites, particularly in the urban
areas of the island. Where the same conditions existed in the
Americas, the experiences of other members of the African diaspora
resembled those of Afro-Cubans. There the size of the African
population relative to the European one, African religious beliefs,
practices, language, and ethnicity influenced the sense of
community Africans felt, and their identity in the
Americas.

[1]Melville. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro
Past. Boston, 1968. First published in 1941.